What is Affiliate Marketing and How Do You Use it to Earn Money?

By Jennifer Patton

Affiliate Marketing. What exactly is it and how do you get started with it?

Now that the internet covers almost every product and service imaginable, advertisers and marketers knew that there had to be a way to get their product out to a wider range of people without expending more effort. The smart retailers and marketers have discovered that by offering a certain percentage of profit from a sale or a click from someone else advertising their products they see their sales go up.

Enter affiliate marketing.

There are many different types of affiliate marketing programs out there but the basic premise behind them is that someone, let's say you for instance, has a blog or a website and on that blog or website you promote a product, a service, or an ebook. This can be done through a link or an image.

Then someone comes across your site or blog or finds an article you have posted online and decides to click on that link or image. After going to the website for that product your reader decides to buy it and you get a commission. That commission is affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is not as easy as it sounds, but many, many people are making a substantial living off of affiliate marketing alone. Here are a few tips to getting started:

1) Find the products that suits your site or blog.

If you have a site about dogs and advertise a program about birds on your site chances are you are not going to see a lot of dollars roll in the door from that program. You can have the best advertisement, the best review, the best affiliate program in the world, but if you are not putting it in the right place it will be the worst money maker you will ever see.

2) Don't just choose the programs based just on their commission rate.

Each program works differently- the commission percentage, what is paid, how it is paid, etc. Just because something pays you a 75% commission on everything sold does not mean you should market that particular product. Part of affiliate marketing is building up credibility, and if you sell others junk just because you make a better commission your return rate is not going to be very high.

3) Market products that you believe in. (Pay close attention to this!)

As stated above, to create a strong affiliate income, you have to promote to your readers a good product. Until you are really able to familiarize yourself with what is out there and what is not, the best thing to do is to promote products that you yourself believe in. So if you are just getting started with affiliate marketing, choose wisely. Your choices in the beginning can make or break you.

4) Make sure that you have good content.

When building an affiliate program you must have something to draw your target market to you. If your site is only a place for you to put promotions and advertisements for different affiliate programs you are really going to have a hard time drawing people to your site. Give them strong, clear, and knowledgeable information on the theme of your site. This will make them not only trust you but want to come back to hear what you have to say.

5) Look for products that have a recurring payment.

This will assist you greatly in building a regular monthly income. Although most recurring programs pay smaller amounts each time, you get paid monthly as long as your subscriber remains a part of the program. Over time this can build into a substantial amount, especially as your readership and your trust with them grows.

6) Post a review of the product or service.

By posting a review of the product or service that you are promoting you give your readers an overview of that product. Your conversion rates will be significantly higher that in you just put a image or a link somewhere on your site. It will also show that you yourself are knowledgeable about the product you are promoting.

Just like network marketing, affiliate marketing is not a get quick rich program. It takes time, work, and knowledge about the product that you are marketing. However, either alone or with your network marketing business, affiliate marketing can create an substantial extra stream of income for you.

Jen Patton is a career wife, mother, and entrepreneur dedicated to sharing knowledge within the network marketing community. Go to http://www.PowerfulMarketingStrategies.com for more information like the article above. This articles was first published at http://networkeradvice.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-is-affiliate-marketing.html Copyright 2008 by Jen Patton